The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Review
CHARLOTTE RUNCIE
RADIO CRITIC
War, peace and the power of words are the themes that sing through this week’s radio. Kenneth Branagh, Greta Scacchi and Mark Bonnar star in a new adaptation of Vasily Grossman’s Stalingrad (Saturday, Radio 4, 2.45pm). One of the great literary achievements of the 20th century, which was only published after convoluted efforts to evade Soviet censors, this is likely to be a broadcasting landmark in this adaptation translated by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler and dramatised by Mike Walker.
In Words and Music: Entering the World of Books (Sunday, Radio 3, 5.30pm), Stephen Mangan and Helen Monks perform a selection of texts that illustrate evolving historical attitudes to the reading of fiction. We hear excerpts from Jane Austen, as well as James Fordyce’s Sermons for Young Women (1766), which warned against books that commit
“rank treason against the royalty of Virtue”. To ram home the point, there’s a passage from Jilly Cooper’s Riders as well.
Around 20million people eligible to vote didn’t do so at the last general election. Most non-voters are from low-income households or are young; they’re some of the people most affected by policy decisions. In The Unheard Third (Monday, Radio 4, 8.00pm), Adrian Chiles asks why some people don’t vote, and looks at constituencies where the non-voters outnumber those who voted for the majority party.
In 1969, as the Vietnam War raged, John Lennon and Yoko Ono staged their “Bed-In for Peace” in Amsterdam and Montreal.
Francine Jones was a young attaché at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal when it happened, and 50 years on, she returns to the bedroom suite and reunites with others who still remember the event for The Documentary (Tuesday, World Service, 1.30pm).
This week, the poet and broadcaster Lemn Sissay presents the final episode of Lemn Sissay’s Social Enterprise (Wednesday, Radio 4, 11.30am), his sensitive, witty and penetrating series on social issues and moral philosophy. Every year, Sissay arranges a Christmas dinner for young adults who have left the care system and have no one with whom to share Christmas. Sissay was moved to start the project because he himself was released from a children’s home at the age of 18 into an empty flat in Wigan. He reflects on what these dinners have taught him about charity, people, shelter and the importance of food.
Tom Allen Is Actually Not Very Nice
(Friday, Classic FM, 8.00pm). Using liturgical texts from a variety of languages ancient and modern, as well as new words written by Carol Barratt, the work is dedicated to all those who have suffered or perished during the various conflicts in the Middle East over the last 70 years, and is performed by the Britten Sinfonia at St Luke’s Church in Grayshott, Hampshire.
Read The Week in Radio by Charlotte Runcie every Wednesday in
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